THERE now began a brief phase of our imminent ordeal that has left
me with an admiration that will be lifelong for the clear thinking and cold
courage of two men  Bill Cherry and Eddie Rickenbacker. I put Bill
first because it is to him we survivors owe our chief gratitude for being
alive today.

Never have I seen any airman perform more masterfully
than he did when the supreme moments came. And Rickenbacker's clear foresight
and thorough preparations undoubtedly averted casualties.

For that matter, my admiration extends to all the
other members of our crew. They behaved as a good bomber crew should. In
bombing raids the men become part of the plane and, with the plane, they
are a machine that is an impersonal, relentless team.

I like to think our men performed that day as expertly
and as smoothly as ever any crew did while dropping a load on Tokyo or Berlin.
The responsibility for the safety of us all in our plight rested upon Bill
Cherry, and he met it coolly, as one of his fellow Texans might meet a charging
steer.

"What do you expect to do now?" Rickenbacker
asked.

"We'll try the box procedure first," Cherry replied.
"There are a couple of other things that may help also."

In the box procedure a lost plane flies a course that
describes a square. This enables the crew to scan a vast area flying inside
and outside the box. At 5,000 feet we

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were 2,000 above the overcast, which now had broken about 50 per
cent, giving us a good view of the ocean below.

Cherry figured that if we should fly 45 minutes on
each leg of the box, we still would have about an hour's fuel when we finished.
As we went into the first leg, he ordered Reynolds to raise Island X
again.

When Reynolds got them, Cherry asked that they begin
firing anti-aircraft shells timed to explode at 8,000 feet. We now climbed
back to 10,000 both to see farther and to be above the bursting
shells.

Island X replied that the firing would begin at once
and that planes would clear as quickly as possible to search for us and to
lead us in. Our men were posted at all windows and ports to watch for the
bursts and planes. Rickenbacker and Col. Adamson assisted in
this.

In the cockpit, beside Bill Cherry, I strained my
eyes for the grayish black bursts that would locate our island and for the
black dots which might resolve themselves into planes.

I searched the far rims of the cloudbank, the blue
vaults of sky above us, and the watery blue floor far below. Never have I
seen a world so ominously empty.

We completed the first leg and the second. We drew
to the end of the third. We banked into the fourth and final leg, still without
seeing either shell burst or plane. Rickenbacker's countenance  what
I could see of it  was inscrutable. The homefolks in Quail, Texas,
would have been proud of Cherry's poker face.

As the last of our three hours ticked off, putting
us back where we had started, Bill summoned Reynolds.

"Go on emergency frequency and start pounding out
SOS" he said. "Someone will hear us and get a bearing on our course." Bill
then gave Reynolds our direction and speed. Then he turned to me.

"Jim," he continued. "We will have to set her down
in

Page 34

about an hour. Let's talk about how we are going to do
it."

So far as either of us knew then, no four-motored
land plane ever had been set down at sea without casualties. In many cases
no member of the crew had lived to tell about it.

When a plane is put into the ocean against the wind,
it meets the waves head on. If it touches on a crest, the nose will be plunged
into the next wave and cave in. Further, the ship probably will not float
an instant, but will continue its dive through the water.

If the plane hits the first crest too hard, it breaks
in two and the parts disappear almost immediately. It is inevitable that
the crew will be stunned for a few instants by a crash landing and in such
a case Davy Jones
has ample time to snatch them down.

I suggested, therefore, that we come in cross wind
and set the ship down in a trough  the valley between two waves. Bill
said this sounded like sense and added:

"I think we ought to do it while we've still got gasoline
in the tanks. A power landing is always better than an uncontrolled
one."

This, in turn, seemed logical to me. Rickenbacker,
who had sat in on part of this talk then took over disposition of the crew
and started making those arrangements I spoke of earlier; the preparations
to which we owed our whole skins.

Rick led everyone except Reynolds to the compartment
aft of the bomb bay and had them lie down, their heads toward the tail and
their feet braced against the bulkhead. Mattresses from the cots were used
as padding. Rickenbacker stationed himself at a port near the forward bomb
bay.

Bill pushed the wheel forward and our big olive-drab
warbird began nosing down toward her last landing. I made some preparations
of my own. I took the cushions

Page 35

from the two seats behind us. Bill and I put them across our stomachs
and fastened the safety belts over them. I turned to Cherry and stuck out
my hand.

"You're going to know me a long time yet, Jim," he
answered. It's going to keep on being swell!" He looked at me an instant
with those direct Texas eyes, then glued his attention to the water, which
was leaping up swiftly now.

We didn't know how much fuel was left and, needing
it all, we cut the two inboard motors at about 500 feet and feathered the
propellers to prevent them turning in the wind. Meanwhile, Rick had got the
aft deck trap open and, aided by the others, was dropping equipment and his
luggage out to lighten the plane. This was for two reasons: (1) to lessen
our weight, reducing the force of impact and (2) to lessen fuel
consumption.

The cots went out also and I believe the mail sacks
did. Most everything was gone when next I looked in that direction. Just
now I was keeping my eyes on Cherry who was staring at the waves. In a rolling
sea it would be his job to know just where our trough would be when we needed
it. At this instant we heard the voice of DeAngelis who had come up behind
us.

"Do you fellows mind," he asked, "if I
pray?"

"What in the hell do you think we're doing?" Bill
Cherry snapped without lifting his eyes. DeAngelis returned to the others
and in a moment Rickenbacker's voice sang out, clear and calm:

"Fifty feet!" and almost immediately: "Thirty
feet!"

I recall a feeling of intense irritation then at
DeAngelis' suggestion of prayer. I thought what a hell of a time to talk
about praying when we need all our wits to save our lives! How often and
how ashamedly was I to remember those brash thoughts in the days to
come.

Page 36

"Twenty feet!"

It was strangely still in the plane. The muffled roar
of the two outboard engines seemed far away. There was a faint whooshing
of wind against the fuselage. The whine of Reynold's radio rose above it,
sharp and insistent.

Sharp and insistent, yes; but how thin and small it
sounded in that vast and empty world, stretching out ahead, above, and on
all sides of our cockpit windows. We were to learn in the blazing days to
come that voices infinitely weaker can be heard if directed to God in
adversity.

"Ten feet!"

Young Johnny Bartek raced forward from the stern and
loosened the lugs holding down the escape hatch over the cockpit. The lid
whipped off and was gone in an instant. Bartek paused in the bomb bay, freed
the hatch there, then sped back to his station on the floor.

The wind was a roar now, howling into the open traps.
We were coming in at 90 miles an hour with the landing flaps and wheels up
so there would be nothing to snag in the water. You can't realize the will
power it takes to put a plane into the sea with even a teacup of fuel left
in the tanks.

"Five feet!" Rickenbacker shouted. "Three feet!...
One foot!"

"Cut it!" yelled Bill.

I pulled the mainline switch, killing every electrical
connection in the plane. Bill hauled back on the wheel, hooking the tail
into the water. The fuselage went down into the trough and lunged, but did
not leave the surface. The waves rolled up about us. We were in. From 90
miles an hour we came to a full stop in a little over 30 feet  about
10 steps.

The shock and pressure of that landing is almost
indescribable to a person who has never been through one.

Page 37

Despite the cushions, the safety belt seemed to be slicing me in
two. A taste of bitter vinegar filled my mouth.

My eyes seemed to spin around like already taut springs
winding up to the snapping point. I couldn't see. I thought I was losing
consciousness.

A final slash of the safety belt and the pressure
inside my head reduced swiftly. My bursting eyes began to unwind. I don't
remember leaving my seat, but next I knew I was up, yanking the rip cord
that freed the forward one of two five-place rubber rafts above the fuselage.
Rickenbacker was freeing the aft raft.

DeAngelis and Kaczmarczyk were shoving the tiny, three
man raft up through the escape hatch over the bomb bay. Rick had assigned
them together because they were the smallest and lightest of our
company.

Bill Cherry was scrambling out of the pilot's seat
unscathed.

Page 38

Blood was streaming from a cut across Reynold's nose. He had stayed
at his key, pounding at SOS until Rickenbacker called: "Three feet!" Reynolds
doesn't know yet what he struck. I heard Col. Adamson calling out as though
in great pain that his shoulder had been wrenched. I had a slight arm
cut.

I don't know the order in which we left the ship.
Uppermost in my mind was the knowledge that for probably the first time in
history a four-motored land plane had been put down into the ocean without
serious casualties. And I wanted to keep it that way.

We got out fast. Water already was gushing into the
plane from broken windows and also, I suppose, from breaks in the fuselage.
I noticed only that Bill Cherry was the last one out. And this was proper
and typical of the man. You'll remember, Bill Cherry was our captain. He
conducted himself accordingly.